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Permission has been obtained from the composer/performer to publish this here.

…if not, visitors will be redirected to another site. I did this to this site, now it’s OK already.

Apparently, this is related to advertlets.com domain which expired yesterday and was not renewed in time.

I wrote before that I think the 3rd season of Akademi Fantasia was the time the show’s popularity peaked among Sabahans. Even I had my own theater seating every Saturday night during those heady days of June-August 2005.

In AF1, there were no Sabahans in the fray. In AF2, Sabahans’ interest were piqued due to the presence of Linda and Adam. In AF3, the quality was arguably even higher - Felix and Marsha.

Most Sabahan then was of the opinion that Mawi should not have been champion.

I think most of us still remember the following little “incidents” involving Felix, which helped to turn him into a household name in the country:

Click here to listen to the audio

It took only a few minutes to deduce that this could very well be *the hotel*. It’s located on Jalan Zabedah, smack in the middle of Batu Pahat town.

On 3rd January 2007 The Star ran a report on the hotel, did not name it, but revealed the following clues:

The plush hotel, which is popular among VIPs who come to Batu Pahat…the lobby with giant pillars and beautiful staircases…

However, at least one other publication, Singaporean paper The Straits Times has named this hotel.

After some digging at tourism websites, it seems that it is indeed the best hotel in town. Then someone who spent most of his life in Batu Pahat wrote that based on The Star’s description, it can ever only be Katerina Hotel, because it’s the highest ranked hotel there (4 stars).

These are Katerina Hotel’s pillars, where according to the hotel’s website, “the main lobby is supported by huge round marbleized columns which stretch to a height of two storeys.”

And this is one of the beautiful staircases:

At night, the front of the hotel looks like this [pic source]:

From the DVD excerpts (from mainstream media, I don’t have the original), it seems the room used has a separate section (living room):

It can hence be deduced that an Executive Suite was used, since the hotel website provides a layout plan of such a room…

…and the following picture of the living room of the Executive Suite checks out…

…also the following video grab I got from NTV7’s site:

This is the view of Batu Pahat town from inside one of the hotel rooms [pic source]:

More views from the 9th floor of the hotel here.

According to the hotel website, it has 10 Executive Suites, sized 525 square feet (about 23 ft x 23 ft), there’s one Executive Suite on each floor. Each suite has “a living area, separate bedroom and a spacious bathroom.”

From a picture in the hotel website, apparently the hotel was established 15th November 1998 and is a subsidiary of DA Dynasty Corporation Sdn Bhd.

The hotel’s website says that it is 15 storeys high, has 6 premier suites, 9 family suites, 10 Executive Suites and 160 deluxe rooms.

The room rates start from RM169 for the deluxe single to RM365 for a family suite.

The Executive Suite’s published rate is RM300, with a promotion rate of RM250 (rate includes breakfast for two).

Now that it has become the most famous (or infamous) hotel in the country, the hotel management could either get in hot soup or get sudden increase in business.

On a completely unrelated note, hey I just heard someone shouting behind my back, “get rid of a hairy back New York!!!”. Hmm… somehow the mere mention of the Big Apple reminds me of the famous New York movers.

Note: there is no malicious intent here, it’s all done in the fun and games spirit of New Year’s Eve.

Chan Lilian said:

Make mental note to self. Next year or any other years, remember that the kids are not interested to watch fireworks. Spent 2 hours in a traffic jam that involves, human, motorbikes and cars jams and we only watched 7 minutes of fireworks. And what did the kids said? “So boring one……”

The solution to that is… let the kids organise their own fireworks show:

This is so good it’s worth plugging for all it’s worth. Added to youtube at the beginning of the year by “bluemenx” (that’s his one and only video), I only knew about it a few days ago.

I think the popularity of Akademi Fantasia among Sabahans peaked in 2005 (AF3) when the funny-in-his-own-eccentric-way Felix and photogenic Marsha were the stars of the show. Marsha’s popularity surged when she did the “Pokok Kelapak” thing, and VE cemented it.

That was already cool enough, but then about a year later someone did a remix that bettered everybody. And I wholeheartedly agree with what dbos wrote, i.e. Maestro should’ve seized on the opportunity to let Marsha record this 2 years ago.

The remix video:

Click here to see the video

Update 2nd January 2007

A day after saying he would not resign, he finally did, relinquishing 5 posts: Health Minister, MCA vice-president, Labis MP, Johor MCA liaison chief and Batu Pahat MCA division chief.

He announced this at a press conference at his Putrajaya office today at 3pm, lasting about 45 minutes:

His reason: “because the rakyat wants me to resign. I thought that by my admission, the people would forgive my weaknesses, but I thought wrong. This shows that honesty does not always pay, (but) it is up to the public to judge me.”

He said he will be a burden to the party and government if he continued holding the posts.

He said he’s also disappointed by the the public’s holier-than-thou attitude on the issue.

More irony: on 2nd December 2007, he was reported to have said the following, after opening the First National AIDS Conference and launching the national-level World AIDS Day in Kuala Lumpur:

“…and be faithful to your partner.”

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Happy New Year everybody. The long holidays has ended, now it’s time to shift into work mode again. We’ve done it so many times before - I am sure things will soon go back to normal.

Now the first headline of the year.

By now this is all over the news already.

Some timeline:

30th March 2004: Dr Chua became Health Minister
Sometime 2005: the recording was purportedly done
29th December 2007: first distributed by unknown persons
30th December 2007: morning: Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek’s found out about it.
31st December 2007: At a press conference in Labis, Johor, he said he had met the Prime Minister and will not resign.

What he did in his private life is his own business, but he is a person holding high public office - therefore he has to be very careful of his private life too. He might not have broken any worldly laws, but he has broken other “laws” - marriage vows, natural laws, religious laws. Based on his argument, he might not need to resign on his own, but in all likelihood, he’ll be forced to do so soon.

The government should give more attention to those involved in arguably more serious issues like corruption, but sex scandals are always big newsmakers. Chua was obviously set up. There might be other people at high places having affairs - it’s just that they’re not exposed in this manner yet.

What do you think, should he resign on his own or wait for the guillotine blade to fall?

The following poster from the Health Ministry seems rather ironic now: